Thursday, May 7, 2015

Fixing Eldar for social play

So I've played a few games against Eldar and have been reading as many bat-reps against the new codex as I can. Here are my suggestions:



1. Dark Eldar are allies of convenience, not battle brothers. This is how it should be anyway - as if a bunch of people who fear a God would chum up with the people who created that God. This change would stop the web-way portal D-flamer shenanigans without killing the fluff or neutering funner builds.

2. Jetbikes can only take 1 special weapon for every 3 bikes

3. Only 1 LoW. Potentially Wraithknight gets -1 on the D-table when firing the cannons but not when swinging with the sword.

With these changes Eldar are still ridiculous with Knights, the Seer council, D-scythe flyers and aspect shrines. Warp spiders are basically un-killable unless your entire army is fast assault, in which case you will die to everything else the Eldar have. But at least this way you have a fighting chance. Wraithguard in Wave Serpents are effective but not game breaking the way they are in WWPs. Basically, with these changes, the Eldar become an undercosted Codex that is nonetheless somewhat hard to play, which makes them okay for social games. They might still dominate the competitive scene (I suspect as allies with the council and Knight and some Ob-sec jetbikes) but at the social level where people make mistakes things will be more manageable and fun. To make it even more so I would jack the Wraithknight to 400 points.

I have played some games where my opponent brought 6th edition style lists with a few extra aspect warriors than before - enough to make a shrine. They were really fun. I had to bring pretty strong lists, but nothing tournament level (e.g. Centurions, but not in a Cent-star). Warp spiders were really nasty (and only 19 points!) but everything else was manageable. Wave serpents are now excellent transports, but well costed. Imperial fist rocket launchers took them down just fine, but not until they had made it up the board and deposited their troops.

I just wish the Eldar dex was more like the Harlequin codex. That thing is ace. It is well-balanced, requires a lot of finesse, can be devastating but can also disappear if you make one false move or fail veil of tears.

For the record, I think all the changes to the Eldar codex besides the heavy weapons on Jetbikes were excellent and really fluffy, they're just grossly under-costed. With rending and basically invincibility to shooting, warp spiders should be at least 25 points each. The Wraithknight should clock in at at least 400 points, perhaps more. Fire dragons should be a bit exier, ditto for Dire avengers. Guardians should have gone down to BS/WS 3 and jetbikes should cost at least 21 points (the price of SM bikes), probably with a 4+. I don't think Wraithguard weapons should be flamers - a close range strength D would be more appropriate. I don't mind them having that high strength; it's the WWP ally dark eldar that make them unbalanced. Everything else - banshees, striking scorpions, vypers, fire prisms, the Avatar, the Guardian formation - they're all great changes.

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